


why a bat

by TheDancingOcelot



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 02:46:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13603920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDancingOcelot/pseuds/TheDancingOcelot
Summary: Clark muses about Bruce's choice of inspiration for his superhero persona





	why a bat

Clark honestly didn't know why Bruce thought bats to be scary. He tried looking at it from every point of view, including the one about hematophagic bats that could possibly transmit rabies but those lived in very specific areas nowhere near close to big cities like Gotham and usually fed on cattle.

Bats were cute. From the way they could stay upside down, to the way their ears moved and even the way they shrieked when using echolocation.

Sure some people had a irrational aversion to them, but most of them hadn't seen one up close, in real life like in a zoo, or in a video like the tens that were around the internet.

He refused, then, to believe that Bruce had chosen a bat as an inspiration, without having researched them first. He could have chosen scarier animals, like ones that could actually cause bodily harm to a human but perhaps they wouldn't have fit with his vibe.

Still. Bats were cute.

You know what else was cute? Bruce.

Clark spent quite some time watching him sleep. He knew that after getting used to them sleeping on the same bed Bruce would relax the tight coil he held his body at at all times and he snored. Not loud snores that could be heard from down a hall, but soft snores that scared Clark so much the first time it happened that he had to check Bruce all over to be sure he hadn't any unmended ribs or that his lungs hadn't collapsed. In the end everything was alright, just his diaphragm being more relaxed than usual and Clark committed the image and sound to his memory as cherished demonstration of unconscious trust.

The other thing Clark found exceedingly cute were Bruce's hands. It wasn't that they were smaller than his or more delicate or anything, but they had something about them that made them cute, even if Clark wasn't sure why. Perhaps it where the bones under his skin, initially delicate but now hardened and stronger after years of countless microfractures, Clark could see all of them, they seemed as if they had been turned to powder and then rebuilt from the zero. Almost like a metaphor to Bruce's life,  _ ad astra per aspera _ , even if he'd fight anyone that mentioned it to him.

Clark knew scars weren't meant to be thought of as beautiful, or mean anything good, but to him they represented all the times Bruce had been at death's door and survived, they were yet another reminder of his mortality, of his humanness, but were also a statement of his strength, of his will to live even despite his own problems, of his need to complete his self-assigned mission. 

Clark love Bruce's lips, even the thin scar, practically invisible, left from a thorned vine from Poison Ivy in a fight. They seemed stiff, when he donned the cowl, what with all the frowning and scowling he did, but where oh so soft when pressed to Clark's.

His eyes were one of the first things people noticed about him. They were startlingly blue, his stare when he put his mind to it seemed as if he could read a person's mind, he probably could, just not in the way most people were used to think, he didn't need telepathy to know what one had in mind.

And oh. Well. Maybe now he could understand see it. Bats were cute, Bruce was cute, the Batman was a perfect theme, even when trying to be the fear, to be the night that Bruce was so intent on saying that was what the Bat meant.


End file.
